09.10.2018 > 31.01.2019 | Mon père, ce robot ? – Multidisciplinary cycle

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Hybridizations human/machine myths and realities

On the occasion of its twenty year anniversary, the Maison du Livre (House of the Book) questions the future! No crystal ball so far, it is the “current” future that is observed: the future seen from here, the one that makes us dream (sometimes), that scares us (often), the one we are predicted, we pretend to impose…

• A big exhibition: interactive timeline, artists’ installations, cultural, mythological, literary and cinematographic routes, objects and messages, a more or less imaginary future …
• Meetings: literary, scientific, (bio) ethical, philosophical, etc. to unravel, confront, evaluate and try to understand;
• Workshops to invite adults and children to understand the issues, to tell, debate and argue;
• Shows: how was the word “robot” invented, when the man is caught in an infernal game, a girl dancing with a robot …;
• Cinema: from the beginnings to the present day, the movies decline cyborgs, hybridized bodies, humanized robots, borrowing from myths, utopias and, most often, dystopias.

What future do we want and will we have the choice?

The starting point will be to note a simultaneous movement, even converging, of hybridization between the man and the machine: the human would tend to be machinized, while the machine would be humanized. Artificial intelligence, robotics and algorithms on one side; prostheses, implants, genome interventions and digitization of the organs of the other. Will we come to abolish the distinction between living and non-living? Is the human being fully digitizable? The task will be to share the real, fiction, mythology and smoke.